Gamepad Test

About the Gamepad Test

The Gamepad Test reads a controller through the browser’s Gamepad API and shows exactly what the browser receives: every button, every analogue value and every axis.

Buttons, triggers and axes

Each button shows a value between 0 and 1. Digital buttons jump straight to 1; analogue triggers pass through every value in between, which is how you spot a trigger that no longer reaches full travel. The raw axes are listed as well, in the order the browser reports them, so a controller with extra axes is not hidden.

Travel and drift are different questions

Travel is how far a stick reaches when you push it; a healthy stick gets close to 1.0 at the edge. Drift is where a stick sits when released; a healthy stick settles close to 0. The resting check samples both sticks for three seconds while you keep your hands off, and throws the result away if a stick moves during it.

The dead-zone overlay

Games ignore small stick movements inside a dead zone. The shaded circle shows what a dead zone of the chosen size would ignore, and the resting check tells you the smallest dead zone that would hide a drifting stick. The overlay is a picture: it does not change or calibrate the controller.

Compatibility and mapping

• Browsers hide controllers from a page until a button is pressed, as a privacy measure.
• When the browser recognises a controller it reports a standard mapping and the test uses familiar names. Otherwise buttons are numbered, because the same number can mean different buttons on different controllers.
• A controller can behave differently over Bluetooth and over USB.
• The rumble button appears only when this browser exposes rumble for the connected controller.
• Browsers stop updating controllers while the tab is in the background.

Related checks

• Controller Stick Drift Test — the resting check on its own.
• Keyboard Test and Mouse Test — the other input devices.

Where this tool stops

The browser sees what the operating system passes on. Some controllers need a driver or a specific connection mode before they appear at all, and extra buttons such as back paddles are often not exposed to browsers.